


Blue Moon

by punktius



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-05
Updated: 2016-03-05
Packaged: 2018-05-24 22:46:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6169615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/punktius/pseuds/punktius
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Usually, when Damen was this close to a vampire, it was already dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blue Moon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [itzbonezz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/itzbonezz/gifts).



> I posted this on a [tumblr](http://serpentineprinceling.tumblr.com) I made for my cp fanfic, but I realized I have so many lovely readers here who wouldn't know of it unless they followed me on twitter, so I'm posting it here too. For stories that are a little longer and more complete, like this one, I'll occasionally post them here as well, but feel free to follow my tumblr for ficlets that might not.
> 
> And once again, this is for bonezz, who requested it and is my favorite <3

Damen’s pulse was steady despite the adrenaline, his feet moving silently across the smooth moonlit tile. He knew he wasn’t alone. He had broken in through a basement window and climbed the stone steps to the first level, then up the spiraling staircase to the second, and then the third, the ceiling high as a belfry above his head. The moon outside of the towering glass windows was so bright it was almost like daylight in the huge tiled room. Damen chose his steps as carefully as a horse picking its way over a churned patch of earth, the danger of floundering in every step. The night was thick, and absolutely silent.

Damen’s eyes flitted to the windows for no more than a moment’s breath, and when he looked back ahead, the demon had materialized before him. He forced himself not to jump. The demon’s white skin glowed, almost unnaturally, its eyes an icy shade of blue that cut through Damen to his core. It was close enough that Damen could see the shimmer of crushed velvet in its dark blue clothing, the severe white laces like latticework across the chest and narrowing to a point at the navel, and criss-crossing in the same way from the wrists to the crease of the elbows. Damen saw the dagger-point of fangs when it opened its mouth to speak.

“Hello, Damen.”

Damen’s blood chilled in his veins at the familiar name; the demon said it as if it were a familiar taste on its tongue.

“You know me,” he said, almost a question.

The demon’s eyes flashed, but the blank expression did not change, as if its face were chiseled in marble. With its serene demeanor and golden cascade of hair, standing across from Damen haloed by moonlight, the beast appeared startlingly angelic. The image was corrupted by a nothingness like death in its catlike eyes, and Damen felt acutely disturbed by its beauty; ethereal, as no evil should be.

There was a moment the length of a sharp inhale in which Damen reached behind himself, wrapping his fingers around the blade in his belt. The handle was smooth in his calloused palm. It was made of inky obsidian studded in rubies, and chiseled expertly into the shape of a crux. The eyes never left his own, yet he felt the demon’s attention hone in on the movement, as a hungry bird of prey sighting a field mouse. There was no time for choice then, and Damen swung his arm around and threw the dagger with deadly speed, the point of it heading straight between the cold blue eyes.

The demon snatched it out of the air, letting out a sharp, inhuman cry as the cross touched its bare skin and burst into flame. It threw the knife violently to the side, where it skidded across the marble, still smoking. The knife had been blessed by a priest, dipped in holy water, and then blessed again, and it singed the demon’s flesh almost to the bone. Its hand did not bleed.

The vacant expression from before was gone; the twist of its mouth now was like the snarl of a hissing cat.

“Have you become so uncivilised, Damianos?” It said, tone acidic. “What a shame, when you were once such a gentleman.”

“How do you know me?”

There was a pregnant pause. Then the beast was coming toward him, the click of heeled boots against the marble loud, ringing in Damen’s ears. Damen’s hands twitched with the desire to reach for something–a bust on a pedestal to his left, the flask of holy water in his jacket, the long blade concealed in his boot–and he forced them to still. The demon stopped a half arm’s length away, gazing up at him from beneath its long pale lashes.

“You don’t remember? I must say, I’m quite offended. I thought you’d never forget me.” Its voice was like water being poured, fluid and lilting. There was a sinuous undercurrent in its tone that made Damen shiver.

Usually, when he was this close to a vampire, it was already dead.

Damen said, “I know nothing beyond the last decade, but I know I did not know you in that time.”

The demon’s gaze lowered, and it turned its face away as if in troubled thought, a gesture that was frightfully human. Damen ran his eyes over the high cheekbones, the sharp-edged jaw, down the smooth skin of its neck where the pale skin disappeared beneath the high collar of its jacket. Damen’s fingertips suddenly ached with memory, the feeling twisting his gut, as painful as if he had been struck with a fist or a club. There was a tiny scar through the demon’s right eyebrow, familiar to Damen, as if he had laid eyes upon it a thousand times before, a thousand lifetimes ago, the pale skin warm and inviting–

“We were lovers,” Damen said, the realization blossoming inside him like a bruise. The creature looked sharply back at him, eyes wide, and Damen stumbled two steps backward. His heart was pounding like a hammer in his chest. The creature stared at him.

Then, “You know nothing of your past?”

“No.”

“Would you like to?” A gaze like cut glass bore into him. “We have such history, Damianos.”

Damen’s limbs seized up with the desire to flee. He wanted to run, to never stop running, his legs carrying him far away from this wretched place and this wicked, pale beauty. He stayed put, his feet cemented to the spot.

The demon began strolling around the spacious room, as if they were conversing leisurely. Its tone and pace were unhurried. “The abbey was truthful to you about one thing. Your name is Damianos. And yes, we were lovers. Rumour was you were about to ask for my hand, in fact.”

Damen’s breath rattled against his ribs as it escaped him. Every word out of the creature’s mouth felt like a needle in his heart.

“We were of the same village, high-born. I’m sure you could have deduced at least that much yourself, if you owned a mirror,” the demon said, with a wave of its hand, and a small part of Damen’s brain registered that it was referring to his looks. Damen, too, had prominent cheekbones, a strong, solid jawline, a wide and unerringly straight nose, full lips. He had the face of an aristocrat. Damen did–had always suspected–as much.

“How do I know I can believe you?”

The demon was circling him now, as if to carefully examine him from all angles. When it stepped behind him, out of sight, Damen’s skin prickled with unease. It was the exact same feeling as turning your back on an angry serpent, and every nerve in Damen’s body was on alert, prepared to defend himself at a moment’s notice. But the creature came back around slowly, and stopped in front of Damen, barely a handspan between them this time. It lifted its long fingers to touch the fabric of Damen’s shirt at his left shoulder, trailing downward slowly, as if it were the gentle and deliberate caress of a lover. Damen’s skin felt like it was about to burst open.

“You have a scar,” it said, pressing firmly against a spot on his pectoral with two fingers, so that it almost hurt. “here.”

Damen did have a scar there. It was two raised lines, crossing like an X over his heart. He had no idea how or where he had gotten it.

As if reading his mind, the demon said, eyes piercing, “I gave it to you.”

The creature’s fingers suddenly took his own, and Damen started despite himself when their bare skin touched. He had expected the beast’s skin to be like ice, to chill him, but its hand was as warm and fleshly as his own when it brought Damen’s fingertips to rest on the soft, dark blue of its jacket, mirroring where it had touched Damen.

“You gave me one to match.”

Damen’s eyes flew wide, and he yanked his hand back, as though burned. There was something like remembrance behind his eyes, nostalgia, as though every disconnected piece of his former life were melding together before him–he saw the blue eyes, sparkling with candlelight; heard a laugh, soft, intimate in his ear; felt the spike of pain and adrenaline as a blade sliced through his skin; the blood, hot as a brand, everywhere. A word was bubbling up from deep in his chest, and he could not stop himself from speaking it aloud.

“Laurent,” Damen said, and its–his, Laurent’s–eyelashes fluttered, like he was coming awake after a long spell of slumber.

After a moment, Laurent said, quietly, “Yes.”

Damen felt as a man walking beneath the sting of sunlight after being held prisoner for many years. His thoughts swam, his fingers were again touching the spot where he had marked Laurent as his own, all those years ago.

“Damen,” Laurent said, and Damen became distantly aware that the luminance of the moon was soon going to become the cold and unforgiving light of dawn. He lifted his gaze, finally, to meet Laurent’s, every ghastly inch of him achingly known to Damen.

“What–” said Damen, the revulsion clear on his face and in his voice, “Laurent… _what happened to you?”_

He had stepped back, caught up in a cosmic horror, the knowledge of what had become of the man he once held so close to his heart splintering through him. Laurent’s barren expression was back in place, and he looked, once again, as a devil in the flesh. The pellucid eyes narrowed considerably.

“Oh, you don’t like me like this?” Laurent said, honeyed tone starkly incongruous with the diabolical gaze. “Not to fret, sweetheart. The teeth don’t get in the way as much as you’d think.”

And this, Damen remembered too–that Laurent could inflict a wound without ever yielding a weapon, his words themselves like jagged-edged scythes. Crimson had surged into Damen’s cheeks the moment the words were spoken.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“No? What, then?” Innocently blinking once, slowly. “I’ll still be nice and warm when you put it in.”

“I–” said Damen, stopping briefly to collect himself. He would not play this game. “Laurent, if we…there may have been something between us in the past. But be clear that there is no future for us now.”

A silence dripping with contempt settled around them, as if he had said something to enrage Laurent. The chirping of bats outside the window seemed too loud in the quiet.

“You’re wrong. We could be together,” Laurent said at last, eyes blazing, “forever.”

Then he reached up and began drawing on the laces at his neck, the fabric parting under adept fingers. Damen’s body lit up with alarm, the instinct for flight, yet his eyes were drawn there as if by magnetism, the spell of Laurent holding him there. It took him a moment to register that Laurent was still speaking.

“We were so happy, you and I, Damianos. Our love was as hot and thick as blood.” The white laces now trailed down Laurent’s sides, the bleached expanse of his chest revealed to Damen’s eyes. The first signs of day were beginning to stream in through the windows. “But it was not to be. We were powerful, even more so together, and there were those who wished to keep us apart. They came for me in the middle of the night, as I was sure they had come for you, but when I looked for you in the afterlife I was met only with darkness, and silence.”

Laurent’s expression shuttered, as if the memory were too painful to bear. His hands had stilled below his sternum, and the jacket hung half-open. His voice was a touch quieter when he spoke again. “I knew you had survived. That they were probably keeping you alive, using you, torturing you…I couldn’t bear to think of it. I had to come back to find you. I had to.”

Laurent’s blue eyes lifted to meet his own after a moment, steady, his chin lifted. “So I made a deal.”

Damen’s skin crawled, violently, as understanding bloomed. He was struck again with the urge to separate himself from Laurent, to put space between them, yet he could not move, could not breathe. He was rendered motionless by his stark disbelief and terror.

Laurent’s voice took on a conversational tone again, his hands resumed with untying laces. “And so, for the small price of my immortal soul, I was allowed to return to the land of the living. Though I would not be. I searched for you endlessly, but it was as if you had vanished into thin air. There was no trace of you.” The corner of Laurent’s mouth turned up then, slightly, in something like bitter amusement. “Imagine my surprise when your name was suddenly being uttered across every corner of the continent. It was in everyone’s mouth, and I could not escape you suddenly, when all those years I had been searching for you. Damianos,” said Laurent, his top lip lifting slightly from his teeth so that Damen could see the elongated canines, almost bared, “vampire-slayer.”

Damen flinched at the title. Every weapon he had brought here to kill Laurent with weighed him down like lead: bibles and vials of garlic and crucifixes in every crevice of his clothing. He had spent years training in the abbey since he’d woken there with no memories of his former self, learning all there was to know about killing demons and vampires, how to effectively vanquish the undead. He had memorized scripture, prayed endlessly, rebuked evil in all its forms. He killed with such ruthless efficiency that he had earned the title vampire-slayer, and he was seen as a blessed prodigy, a prophet sent by God to challenge the Devil. But as he gazed at Laurent now…Damen wasn’t sure he could go through with what he had come here to do, with what he had been trained and disciplined to do. And he knew that Laurent knew it.

“You won’t kill me,” Laurent said, and he had to step back away from the windows, where the dawn could not touch him. “Not today. But tonight you will return, and you’ll either be here to kill me, or you won’t.”

“Laurent, if you leave this town, I can spare you–”

Laurent let out a laugh that was savage, devilish, as though the sound came from some deep unearthly place. “Spare me? You are too kind.”

Then he shrugged the jacket off his shoulders, so that the sleeves caught around his elbows. Damen’s eyes flew immediately to the place where, if things had gone differently, he might have driven a stake–and there was an X there, as though Laurent had marked the spot for him. But it was Damen who had inflicted the scar. He felt dizzy; it was a struggle to keep upright and breathing.

“You have a choice. I will not force you. But know that I chose you,” said Laurent, the words falling between them. “I chose you. Given a hundred chances in a hundred different lives, I would always come back for you. And I would choose you as many times over.”

Damen’s breath died in his throat, and he made the mistake of pressing his eyes closed briefly. When he opened them again, the room was alight with the first morning hour, and he was utterly, abysmally alone.

**Author's Note:**

> I want to thank everyone so much for the support! This is my first time being so public with my writing and all of the comments and kudos really keep me going. <33


End file.
